Ecotur Nordeste: e-business de experiências turísticas e de impacto socioambiental

Abstract

According to government data, tourism employs 7 million people and accounts for 8.1% of the sum of all wealth produced in the country. The impact reaches 53 segments of the production chain. However, weaknesses in infrastructure and planning can generate significant problems, centered on environmental degradation and social exploitation. Added to this problem is the concentration of 'Sun and Beach' tourism, especially when it comes to the Northeast Region of the country. With the purpose of acting in the opposite direction of the mass tourist offer, the Ecotur venture was created in 2016. The initiative has revealed the potential of several destinations in the Northeast, through tourist experiences that escape the conventional products of the agencies in the sector. Rio Grande do Norte is Ecotur's focus, not only because it is where the company is located, but because of all the existing characteristics, which manifest themselves in a scenario of great deficits, such as the high informality of tour operators and the dispersion of offer. It is within the perspective of boosting Ecotur as an agent of local socioeconomic development, through businesses with a socio environmental impact of experience tourism, that the present scientific-entrepreneurial research aims to develop technologies to mitigate the aforementioned problems. The central theoretical assumptions of the study are approaches, methodologies and creation tools aimed at modeling the business and innovation strategies for the company's traction. Of an applied nature, the research is supported by bibliographic procedures and technological development aimed at electronic business (e-business). Specifically, the entrepreneurial idea turned to the development of a marketplace of tourist experiences with socio-environmental impact in the Northeast, aiming to sell unconventional destinations and using electronic commerce (e-commerce) to facilitate the acquisition and purchase process. Three Minimum Viable Products (MVP) were developed, as well as continuously implemented innovation management processes, supported by the Design Thinking approach and the C Model of Canvas. In unfolding, is the boosting of the startup Ecotur, with significant insertion in the local scene of innovative entrepreneurship, translated by the winning of several public notices, between 2020 and 2022, as well as by the company's indexes. Still within the project's traction processes, an innovation strategy centered on the 'RN in Box' subscription club was developed. The survey results indicate that it is possible to operate in the tourism segment and generate a positive socio-environmental impact.